


State of Mind

by htebazytook



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Time, Humor, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Romance, Slash, Smut, Texting, reichenbach feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:16:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htebazytook/pseuds/htebazytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock navigates a new setting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	State of Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Angst! Romance! Sneaky song lyrics!

**Title:** State of Mind  
 **Author:** [](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/)**htebazytook**  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Warnings:** none  
 **Disclaimer:** <—  
 **Pairing:** John/Sherlock, Sherlock/OMC  
 **Time Frame:** post series 2  
 **Author's Notes:** Angst! Romance! Sneaky song lyrics!  
 **Summary:** Sherlock navigates a new setting.

It feels like London, today. The wind borrows an extra edge of unseasonable bitterness from the river. The sky is overcast, and the people who hurry through the streets are bundled up and grumpy about it.

Sherlock tightens his scarf around his neck and meanders through the streets until he's landed in a completely different part of town with completely different pedestrians. So much is new to look at and make deductions about, and it should've been like Christmas. It's strange how quickly the streets have become old familiar places.

He hadn't counted on preferring the old familiar places in London.

He's on the observation deck of some tourist attraction or other, flanked by chipper pedestrians and bored out of his mind when someone waves up at him from the pavement. The bouncy family next to him wave back and bounce some more. Sherlock looks down over the ledge long after they've gone. There hadn't been another way, and that was that. There was no point in dwelling on it, and he doesn't, but sometimes and quite unexpectedly, he just remembers things.

London is a large, cosmopolitan city, but this one has a brightly lit edge to it that won't let you relax. It's awake and moving all night and all day, and it's tiring and exciting and doesn't leave Sherlock with time to think much past its stimuli. Theoretically. He has, always and with great obstinacy, wanted London to be more like this.

Instead, the silence of his lonely room is a relief compared to the schizophrenic city that surrounds it.

*

Sherlock's password on his phone has been _J-O-H-N_ for awhile now. _Not_ out of sentimentality, but because it's the last thing anyone (and particularly John) would expect.

" _Child's play,_ " Mycroft had said when he'd handed Sherlock's unlocked phone to him on the day of Sherlock's funeral. He'd persuaded John to give it to him by insisting it contained sensitive information, state secrets, and the key to finding Moriarty.

" _And he bought that?_ " Sherlock had asked.

" _We have the phone back now, that's all that matters,_ " Mycroft had evaded, and Sherlock had snickered. " _Now. Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . ._ "

" _Do I even have a choice?_"

Mycroft's smile lashes out at him from the past. " _Well, no. We did agree on this, Sherlock._ "

" _That makes you think I'll hold up my end of the bargain why?_"

Mycroft's smile had turned unpleasanter.

Sherlock had given in to him eventually. He'd settled for running up the room service bills in every luxury hotel on his Mycroft-dictated itinerary in revenge. Money was no object, of course, but Mycroft knew Sherlock wouldn't actually _eat_ any of it, and the principle of the thing would irk him to no end.

" _You do realize I am well paid for my services as a consulting detective and don't rely on Mycroft's . . . charity just to support myself? If Mycroft is ever stupid enough to give me money he certainly knows I intend to use every penny._"

John had snorted. " _What, just to spite him?_ "

" _To teach him a lesson._ "

" _Ah, much different then._ "

After a few weeks of the relentless city Sherlock gets bored of its unflagging excitement and begins picking at the trays of food he orders up to his five star rooms. Sherlock rarely eats food he doesn't already like, but he's just bored enough to start trying new things. Edamame is good, actually. So is gouda. (He'd doubted John's enthusiasm.) And the foie gras in this place . . .

*

It takes Sherlock a good hour to realize the looks he's getting as he watches the children's carousel are probably not ideal. Relatives may be tiresome in practice, but deducing an entire family dynamic based on childrens' behavior was at the very least an interesting waste of time.

It's properly autumn, which Sherlock knows from the tint of the trees. British parks aren't like this—they're more about orderly lawns and less about wrangled up patches of forest. There's a metaphor in there, somewhere.

Sherlock had gone without his coat during the summer, but today's the first day he can justify wearing it again without looking like the sort who lived _in_ the park.

Clothes are important. Clothes categorize you and give off whatever impression you'd like to give off to people. So, Sherlock always dressed smartly unless there wasn't reason to. He wanted to make sure people knew he was professional, not desperate to adorn himself with various sartorial affectations for the sake of being noticed. He didn't _need_ clothes to be noticed. And so he wore drab, Londony colors that made it easy to fade into the gray and shadowy streets. In London, that is.

John thought Sherlock's scarf was an affectation. ( _Oh no, we can't forget the scarf, can we?_ or _Well blimey! I didn't think your head was even capable of supporting itself without your scarf to bolster it up, like those Indonesian women with the neck rings or whatever,_ or, most frequently, variations on _It is bloody August, Sherlock! This is an actual heatwave!_ ) In reality, it was purely practical. Sherlock was almost always cold, and the skin rubbed raw on his neck from playing the violin was best shielded from the elements. The calluses there could be so itchy and obnoxious.

As if in counterpoint to the piece that lodges itself in Sherlock's head as his mind wanders to his unfortunately missing instrument, he soon walks past a busker playing an erhu under a bridge. The park was across the way from museums and the sought after residences of high society, but in its heart it was all bottled up wildness.

Sherlock had been in plenty of wild places, or at least places that weren't urban. His family's lately unused country house that Mycroft so loved to scuttle away to when he was out of his depth, and other places, definitely, but Sherlock only thought of Dartmoor, anymore. Sherlock had got enough of the charm of trees and mud and rocks in your shoe out of that excursion to tide him over for about a decade, or at least he'd thought so.

This city is predictable, if filled with fascinating variables, but the park is an unnatural kind of nature and the paradox of it appeals to him. The reasons why people come to the park are more complicated, too. It meant a different mecca to different people.

It smells so strongly of nature, here, of growing or rotting things. Not neatly-cut grass like Regent's Park or something. It occurs to him, near a sort of miniature castle, that John smells like wood does. Not _literally_ the actual way wood smells—the way that John smelled _felt_ like the way wood smelled. Like dark quiet cabins, or the speed of John's idle thoughts when he was alone, or the warm insinuation of his body heat in January taxis.

*

Sherlock is in that small café he likes near Chinatown fiddling on his phone when he taps the Messages icon accidentally. The most recent conversation is with Mycroft, followed by Moriarty, followed by John. John might've made a terrible joke and called it symbolic.

He scrolls through John's texts:

> Can you get some milk  
>  on your way back? 
> 
>   
>  **What for?**   
>  **S**   
> 
> 
> Do you want black  
>  tea for a week? 
> 
>   
>  **This Tesco has exactly 17 different milk**   
>  **and/or cream options in stock.**   
>  **Text back in the next 2 minutes**   
>  **with further instruction.**   
> 
> 
> The green one.
> 
> \-------
> 
> Can you get some more  
>  coffee on your way back? 
> 
>   
>  **Why?**   
>  **S**   
> 
> 
> Almost out. 
> 
> **I don't need coffee.**
> 
> Greater London begs to differ.  
>  Get Maxwell house.
> 
> \-------
> 
> Can you get milk? 
> 
>   
>  **Yes.**   
>  **S**   
> 
> 
> WILL you get milk? 
> 
>   
> **Certainly, John, why**  
>  **didn't you simply ask**  
>  **me in the first place?**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Meet me at the Yard.**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **The tiki lamps.**  
>  **Remind me.**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Morgan is the murderer.**  
> 
> 
> \-------
> 
> Will you get milk  
>  on your way home? 
> 
> **Yessir.**
> 
> That was ONE time!  
>  DROP IT.
> 
> \-------
> 
> Out of earl grey. 
> 
>   
> **I'll get some. I'm going**  
>  **that way anyway.**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Do you need milk?**  
> 
> 
> Yes, thanks. 
> 
> **The green one?**
> 
> Yes. :) 
> 
> **Stop.**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **I need milk.**
> 
> So get some. I've  
>  taught you how and  
>  everything. 
> 
> **I'm busy at home.**
> 
> FINE. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> **We need milk.**
> 
> OK. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Milk.**
> 
> OK. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Milk.**
> 
> OK. 
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Milk.**
> 
> OK.
> 
> \-------
> 
> What did you do?
> 
> Did you get the text I just sent?
> 
> Answer your phone.
> 
> I'm coming back to Bart's.  
>  I'm going to kill you if you aren't there. 

Sherlock watches tourists and residents and traffic coming and going, optimistic with springtime. There is a Chinese restaurant across the street that John would've dragged Sherlock to, citing the usual frivolous concerns like low blood sugar and going 72 hours without sleep and just being generally annoying.

*

In the roaring traffic's boom Sherlock goes out for one of his evening rambles. It's nothing but boring.

When he returns to the ridiculous new hotel Mycroft's put him up at—the last one had filed an official complaint about how Sherlock had single-handedly depleted their kitchens—the concierge stops him at the lift and hands him an envelope. Sherlock opens it in the safety of his 15th floor suite.

> _
> 
> Meet me for lunch tomorrow. And don't worry about the fellow delivering this. I know what he likes.
> 
> 12:30 sharp, at your most recent former residence.
> 
> _

Sherlock strolls into the hotel lobby at 12:48, tugs his scarf off and feels his face beginning to thaw as he meanders over to the dining room. No snow, yet, but the proximity of the ocean coupled with the height of the buildings seems to whip up an especially wintry wind, here.

She sticks out like a sore thumb in a way that she is clearly pleased with. Rich red hair in a effortless bob that makes her look like a model, with six inch heels—Louboutin, again—that contribute nicely to the illusion. She looks classy as ever, but younger and like the sort of fashionable person who buys whatever's new this season without thinking too much about it, but she pulls it of better than most. Her eyes are more over-the-top smoky and less slyly retro, and her lips are glossy to the highest degree. She spots him straight away, and her keen eyes follow him the whole way through the dining room.

"I don't believe we've met," Sherlock says as he nears the table.

Irene smirks up at him, gestures to the empty chair across from her. "Call me Leah," she says, in a flawless local accent.

Sherlock takes a seat. "Hiding in plain sight?"

"I learned from the best."

Sherlock snorts. "Don't bother. I'm not the kind of person who can be flattered, no matter what certain . . . individuals may think."

"This place is awesome," Irene says, and Sherlock raises an eyebrow. "Have you ever eaten here?"

"In essence." Sherlock casts his gaze around for a waiter. The dining room is largely empty, but the few patrons who are also doing lunch look more or less the way Irene looks, young and insufferably fashionable. "Surprised they let me back in, actually, as I'd been explicitly assured I was on some sort of list." Perhaps Mycroft would run out of hotels on the island to put Sherlock up in, and would be forced to branch out into an unsightly borough where they likely wouldn't accept the ludicrous credit card that Mycroft used.

"You could try, like, going incognito. Just because you've gotten along okay so far . . ."

"Indeed I have. So tell me, _Leah_ ," Sherlock says, "what's a nice English girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Same thing as you, probably."

"Oh I rather doubt it."

She eyes him. She has the same much-too-knowing way of eyeing him. "Who else knows? About you, I mean."

"Well I _could_ tell you," Sherlock says. "But then I'd have to kill you, I'm afraid."

"Ah, one of those. Gotcha."

Later, Irene insists on paying. "We never did get that dinner," she says. "Think of this as an I.O.U." She kisses him on the cheek and leaves Sherlock standing alone in the lobby.

*

The entrance of Sherlock's latest hotel is flanked by chestnut trees that upset the traffic flow on the pavement. He's become so bored of the place that he's taken to studying the incessant parade of town cars that pull up under the awning. It's laughably easy to guess who came out of which one and when and why, so one night he leaves the hotel without notice or his luggage.

A woman with a pink suitcase rolls her way through the revolving door just as Sherlock is leaving.

At Waterloo station,

" _Think she's a murderer? Sherlock?_ "

" _What?_ "

John had sighed or laughed or something. " _That woman, there. She's got pink baggage. During the last case I tagged along on, you said the killer must still have Jennifer Wilson's case, and—_ "

Sherlock squints at the throngs of people surrounding them in the memory and in the present. " _Sorry, are you writing a book or something?_ "

Sherlock hasn't looked at a map or a GPS the entire time he's been here. It was much more efficient to pick out a person in the crowd who was headed where Sherlock wanted to go and follow them, instead.

Tonight's a Friday night, and even the posh presence of a hotel like this one can't completely ward off the caravans of bar hopping youth that clog the streets. Sherlock picks one out, and follows him.

Sherlock isn't exactly dressed for the bass-thumping club he ends up at, but on the other hand he isn't in the mood for pretending. Irene enjoyed the challenge of disguise, keeping secrets and most of all keeping herself secret, but Sherlock couldn't be bothered. Acting was a means to an end, and most of the time he'd rather not waste his energy on it. He would dress the same as always and talk the same as always, and be both dead and still alive, and that was that.

He hasn't ordered a drink at the bar, so he's instantly suspicious when a gin and tonic is placed in front of him with a muttered explanation from the bartender.

"You probably couldn't hear 'cause of the music," someone shouts, "but this is on me." A man wedges his way next to Sherlock at the bar. He holds out his hand to Sherlock. "I'm Jason."

He's about Sherlock's height, a stock broker, rich, late twenties, arrogant, lives above the park on one side or the other, youngest child, and, given the locale and his smile, both gay and looking for a good time. "Charmed, I'm sure," Sherlock says, not shaking Jason's hand.

"Ooh, I love the accent."

"Oh really?" Sherlock drawls. "Yours is a bit crass and heavy on the short-A split, but it's certainly not the worst I've heard."

Jason laughs. "You're a funny one."

"So I've been told," Sherlock sighs, tiring of the conversation already. "Thanks for the drink, but I don't care for drinking all that much."

"Oh okay. No problem." Jason accidentally-on-purpose leans into Sherlock and Sherlock rolls his eyes. "So uh . . . did you want something else instead?"

Sherlock has a retort on the tip of his tongue, but then again he is rather atrociously bored. "Well," Sherlock says. "Now that you mention it . . . "

It's certainly an effective distraction, if nothing else. Jason had snogged Sherlock in a dirty alleyway, and then again in the dirty cab, and a lot more in Jason's fantastically expensive condo with its four tiny rooms. Sherlock could appreciate his straightforwardness as he stripped Sherlock of his clothes and edged him into the six-figure master bedroom that was the size of Sherlock's kitchen. The kitchen. John's kitchen? Sherlock didn't know.

The kitchen from before now.

"Goddammit," Jason whispers, "you are _such_ a cocktease."

"I'm not, though," Sherlock says, and drops to his knees to prove it.

Later, when he's fucking Sherlock into the high threadcount sheets, Jason says, "Jesus," and Sherlock is horrified when he hears it echo in his head in someone else's voice possibly every time he'd said it, and especially the last time in the lab at Bart's when he'd hated Sherlock more than usual and stormed out and left Sherlock alone, just like he was now in this stupid new city with its stupidly gigantic hotel suites where he sat and did nothing and nobody at all was there to storm out on him.

"Is that all you've got?" Sherlock says, because that's the kind of thing that spurs men like this on in every aspect of their lives. "Fuck me _hard_."

"I'm gonna fuck I so hard you won't remember your own name," Jason rumbles.

Sherlock hopes so. He's remembering too much as it is.

*

> Answer you phone, Sherlock.  
>  M
> 
>   
>  **So you can scold me like**   
>  **a child? Shockingly, I'm**   
>  **not as keen as you are.**   
> 
> 
> You're going through five star  
>  hotels like candy. 
> 
>   
> **I expect you'd know.**
> 
> **On both counts.**  
> 
> 
> At this rate, I'll have to start  
>  putting you up in Motel 6's.
> 
> That's not a threat, it's a promise. 
> 
>   
>  **By all means do. Maybe if**   
>  **you didn’t insist on such stupidly**   
>  **extravagant accommodations,**   
>  **the hotel staff would be less**   
>  **offended by my 'attitude**   
>  **adjustment problems'.**   
> 
> 
> Yes, I'm well aware this is  
>  secondary school all over again.  
>  In more ways than one.  
>  Which is why I am paying  
>  your extravagant accommodations  
>  a tidy sum to keep quiet about  
>  you even in spite of your  
>  inevitable abuses of their facilities.  
>  And their staff. 

*

The next time Sherlock has to change hotels, it's not so much because of running up the room service bill again and as it is because of a distinct lack of electricity, running water, and heat.

Sherlock wades through the streets with his hands in his pockets. The park is exceptionally treacherous-looking, so he wades his way through it.

His shoes had always fared surprisingly well day after a rainy London day, but they're water logged and muddied by the time he reaches the fountain. The fountain is, of course, completely overflowing. It was normally such a focal point in the park, this ancient wishing well where you met people or found inspiration or just sat and felt the nearness of others without having to talk to them. It facilitated some decent people watching, Sherlock had found, but even the current polluted desolation of the place held a certain artistic appeal. He stands there until the fringes of his coat are wet.

Sherlock doesn't bother with finding a new hotel. Instead he finds things to do for the next two weeks, mainly helping people find lost things or lost people and fixing anything he sees that is broken provided it's challenging.

It gets to the point that Sherlock is gaining some level of notoriety, and he has to keep changing his clothes and his accent because of it. There is almost nowhere to charge his phone, and barely any reception, anyway—what else is he supposed to do?

*

Some time later on the subway where he can't get reception, Sherlock scrolls up as far as it goes.

>   
> **Baker Street.**  
>  **Come at once**  
>  **if convenient.**  
>  **SH**
> 
> **If inconvenient,**  
>  **come anyway.**  
>  **SH**
> 
> **Could be dangerous.**  
>  **SH**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **Fetch me some tea.**  
>  **SH**  
> 
> 
> I'm in the next room.
> 
> I can see you. 
> 
>   
>  **Yes, and you're closer to the tea.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Enjoying your bloody tea? 
> 
>   
>  **No need to be crass, John.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> No need to put your name  
>  after every text you send. 
> 
>   
>  **It's not a need,**   
>  **it's a signature.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> \-------
> 
> Chinese, tonight? 
> 
>   
>  **None for me, thanks.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Just curious, do you eat ever?  
>  Was that "not when I'm working"  
>  thing actually a warning sign? 
> 
>   
>  **You're a doctor, aren't you?**   
>  **Do you really think I've**   
>  **an eating disorder?**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> I'm ordering you food.  
>  Tell me what you want or  
>  suffer through whatever's cheapest. 
> 
>   
>  **I'll take an eggroll**   
>  **if you'll shut up.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> \-------
> 
>   
>  **Come to Bart's.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> This is a joke right?  
>  I'M AT WORK. 
> 
>   
>  **You can't possibly**   
>  **expect me to keep**   
>  **up with your hobbies.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> The only two things I  
>  do are go to work and  
>  follow you around.  
>  So if I'm not actively  
>  following you around  
>  we can deduce . . . 
> 
>   
>  **I got you fried pork wontons.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> It's going to take a  
>  couple of minutes, OK? 
> 
>   
> **They're getting cold . . .**  
>  **SH**
> 
> \-------
> 
> **What did you do to the kitchen?**  
>  **SH**  
> 
> 
> Hold on to your hat  
>  because last night I  
>  officially cooked in  
>  221Bs virgin kitchen. 
> 
>   
>  **I was conducting an experiment**   
>  **on the workspace.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Yes I noticed that when I  
>  moved it out of the way and  
>  relocated it to your room. 
> 
>   
>  **How would you like it if I**   
>  **put your jumpers in the oven?**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Jumpers don't belong in the  
>  oven whereas experiments  
>  belong anywhere that isn't  
>  being used for food prep. 
> 
>   
>  **I'm moving it back.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Sherlock, go to your room. 

*

Sherlock can't see the source of the almighty New Year's Eve din from his hotel window, but he can sure as hell hear it. The hotel should've paid him to endure the celebration and not the other way around, really.

Sherlock orders all the appetizers from both of the hotel's restaurants and munches on them moodily. He needs something to do.

When the uproar the next street over reaches its zenith his phone moans orgasmically.

> I'd kiss you myself  
>  if I were still in the  
>  city, Mr Holmes.  
>  Sadly this will have  
>  to suffice. x.
> 
>   
>  **Resolutions?**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> I've never needed those.  
>  What about you, darling? 
> 
>   
>  **To make this stop.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> What? 
> 
>   
>  **This feeling.**   
>  **It follows wherever I go.**   
>  **Bit excessive.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> I see.  
>  And what does it  
>  feel like, exactly? 
> 
>   
>  **Hunger. Fatigue.**   
>  **Adrenergic storm.**   
>  **It feels like everything.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Happy New Year,  
>  Mr Holmes. 

But the last text is just an alert at the top of the screen as he scrolls through old conversations again.

>   
>  **I'm moving it back.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Sherlock, go to your room. 
> 
> \-------
> 
>   
>  **The living room is a mess.**   
>  **SH**   
> 
> 
> Because of your things, yes. 
> 
>   
>  **Would it kill you to**   
>  **tidy up, once in awhile?**   
> 
> 
> I'm not a housewife.  
>  Actually. 
> 
>   
>  **You cook, you clean, you don't work,**   
>  **and you do whatever I say.**   
> 
> 
> Raising these kids is a full time job.  
>  Don't expect dinner on the table  
>  when you get home tonight.  
>  You cad. 
> 
>   
>  **I only want an eggroll.**   
>  **Bring me one.**   
> 
> 
> Ok but ONLY because it  
>  comes with the wantons. 
> 
> \-------
> 
>   
>  **Henry’s therapist currently in Cross Keys Pub**   
>  **S**   
> 
> 
> SO? 
> 
> **Interview her?**
> 
> WHY SHOULD I? 
> 
> \-------
> 
>   
>  **Dimethylmercury in the**   
>  **tulle of the dress.**   
>  **Lestrade doesn't need all the**   
>  **details just yet.**   
>  **S**   
> 
> 
> . . . Dare I ask? 
> 
>   
>  **You are insufferably**   
>  **abecedarian, John.**   
> 
> 
> Are you about to pull a  
>  glowing rabbit out of  
>  your deerstalker? 
> 
> \-------
> 
> Can you get some milk  
>  on your way back? 
> 
>   
>  **What for?**   
>  **S**   
> 

*

There had been many times Sherlock had longed to escape London and the flat and the sameness of everything. Now he had. It was what he'd wanted.

He thinks about the dissatisfaction of it all the time. It _is_ something to think about, but it's also getting unnecessarily distracting at this point. He eats instead of thinking, now. His shoes never keep the elements out, anymore, and he hates his Mycroft infested life and his phone and he hates how tall the buildings are.

What did ordinary people do?

Sherlock meanders through uptown until he finds a sign, strides up the stupidly tall building's steps, past a harried receptionist who frankly doesn't stand a chance, and into a profusely pastel little office.

The smartly dressed woman behind the desk doesn't flinch, not even when her receptionist starts banging on the door. "Can I help you, sir?" She has neatly dyed blonde hair, minimal makeup, and watchful brown eyes which follow Sherlock as he approaches.

"You can try. I'm curious." Sherlock sits in the pillow-choked chair across from her.

The woman nods, still remarkably unmoved. She pauses to speak into her intercom and call the receptionist off, then favors Sherlock with a placid smile. "Have you ever been to a therapist before?"

Sherlock snorts.

"I see. Well, I'll be honest with you, sir, prospective patients normally make an appointment before, well, showing up to their appointments."

"Do you have another appointment scheduled, right now?"

"No."

"What an astonishing stroke of luck. Consider this one made. Now that's sorted, explain all this to me."

She nods understandingly. "Mmhm, mmhm. And what is 'all this' ?"

Sherlock is incredulous. " _Feel_ -ings. That _is_ what you do, yes?"

"That's one way of looking at it." She leans forward and rests her elbows on her desk, which makes her pastel suit jacket bunch up. "Do you think you need help with explaining some of your own feelings, Mr, uh . . . ?"

"Yes, fine, call me mister if you must. This really is a pressing issue—" Glances at the nameplate on her desk. "—Dr Hirsch, and I'd appreciate it if you'd—"

"I would be happy to help you examine your feelings . . . but I don't believe I know your name?"

"Correct," Sherlock says. "Now, tell me how to make them go away."

Dr Hirsch blinks at him.

"Well? Go on then."

"I . . . this isn't how I prefer to begin a session with a new client."

Sherlock sighs. "Isn't it?"

"I have found it the most helpful if we just relax and get to know each other over the first couple of sessions . . ."

Sherlock sinks lower in his chair and sighs more forcefully. The doctor keeps talking, and he tunes most of it out. It's clear she can't be reasoned with.

". . . to start with. Why don't you tell me a little bit about your friends, family . . . just the people in your life?"

People? People are _around_ , but they don't so much inhabit his life as peer into it or stumble through it occasionally before going back to where they came from. It's strange to think of people. The herd mentality vying constantly with the instinct for self-preservation. Seeking out enemies and allies all the time, and placing such importance on the way everyone relates to everyone else. All animals operated like this, it was nothing new. Migrating schools of fish or the elaborate society of honeybees.

It was strange to think of the way all main streets always looked or the sound of words, addictions and morality and the domestication of dogs. People were direly strange, but they never seemed to notice it in themselves.

"Hm," Sherlock says, shaking his head. "Schools of fish."

"I see, I see," Dr Hirsch soothes. "Tell me, do you often have trouble thinking of other people as . . . real people?"

"I don't need you to diagnose me, doctor, so do save yourself the trouble. I am obviously arrogant (albeit with good reason), I'm perfectly well aware of social cues but usually elect to ignore the stupider ones (which is most of them, really), and I certainly don't have _trouble_ seeing other people as real. I understand that people are real. The thing is that most people aren't worth the trouble of noticing at all. And of course I realize how all that sounds, so I tend to explain it as sociopathy."

"Very interesting. Someone who is a sociopath doesn't usually view himself as such."

"Well, maybe I'm just a particularly self-aware one."

"Tell me about your friends, then. The people who are 'worth the trouble'."

"I didn't come here to give you my life story, I came here for your professional opinion on what I am feeling."

"Even so," she says smoothly. "I'd like to hear more about your friends."

"I don't see much point in those."

She raises her eyebrows.

Sherlock huffs. "I _used_ to have a person who was like a friend, though. I suppose."

"Why not label that friendship? It's possible to have friends with whom you have different degrees of familiarity—for example, for me, I have a neighbor I talk to regularly, mostly about the weather and other small talk. I also have an old friend from college who I meet up with in midtown every month, and we catch up. I have a nanny who I employ, of course, but who I still consider a friend."

Sherlock shakes his head. "This one's not a friend. Your definition is much too broad."

"Okay," Dr Hirsch says. She's infuriatingly unflappable, something which normally wears off much sooner with people after meeting him. "How would you define your relationship with this person?"

Sherlock studies the shelf above her effortless hair. "You're a musician?" The Bach bust, the metronome.

Dr Hirsch nods.

"Like an ostinato."

*

Sherlock sits on the tile by the hotel's pool snacking on starchy whatevers. The smattering of determined morning swimmers and the elderly couple and the clan of models who'd hogged the hot tub had long since cleared out. Sherlock's mercifully alone at last, sweating on the heated tiles and surrounded by crumbs.

"Oh, of course you're wearing your bloody coat in here."

"What the—?" Sherlock turns around.

"Evening," John says, normal-voiced and damp around the hairline. Sherlock studies his body language rather than his expression because body language always betrays more, and John's facial expressions are always deliberate. John looks confident, if weary, and neither overjoyed nor furious. He looks, generally, like he couldn't care less whether Sherlock was there or not, which is certainly a logical position to adopt. It's rational and logical and sane and Sherlock should be glad about that.

John laughs, looks away. "It's weird. Part of me wishes you weren't here after all."

"That isn't _new_."

John meets his eyes. "Aren't you going to ask?"

"Ask . . . ?"

John gestures around them. "Er, how I _found_ you? Don't act like this was your plan all along."

"It . . . wasn't . . . " Sherlock keeps having to catch his breath, thoughts, indeterminate impulses. He swallows.

John's hands have been at rest at his sides, and they stay there as he talks: "I believed it at first, I really did, but once I really stepped back to think about it, things looked fishy. The way Molly was about the autopsy—she said there was no point in seeing your body, she never shied away from that sort of thing with me before. And it was easy enough to break into the morgue after hours considering how often I've done it with you. Listen, I'm adequately clever, but unlike you I'm not also a complete twat, so I made some calls—a _lot_ of calls, in fact—and you'd be surprised just how easy it is to get information when you're nice about it. Especially when you're looking for the sort of bloke who pisses off hotel staff with impressive regularity, and on such a deep level that they're willing to bare their souls to a stranger on the phone even in spite of some pretty hefty bribes from sources theoretically unknown."

"You seriously expect me to believe you guessed which city I was in, and that I had stayed put, that . . . oh, Mycroft must have told you, he has to have."

"Neat little idea, but no. It was more what Mycroft wouldn't tell me. Ask him, if you like."

"How did you, er, know I . . . here? I'd be here."

John's inscrutable expression breaks very briefly into a smile. "You always order a ridiculous amount of room service. I assume it's some sort of underhanded revenge against your brother, because I can't imagine you _not_ hating being stuck in New York. Whenever I called I was usually pretending to work for Mycroft and sort out the outrageous bills you'd wracked up. Also this is literally the only hotel approaching upscale left unscathed by the wrath of Sherlock, so you had to be here. And I heard some worryingly thin young women in the lobby complaining about a pervert hanging out by the pool."

"That . . . is . . ." Sherlock shakes his head to clear it. "How did you even know I was alive, still?"

John laughs. "I can't believe I have to spell it out for you," he says. "You're brilliant, and you're amazing, and you're not a fraud. It's simple."

Sherlock wants to see all of John at once. Not only physically; Sherlock also wants to see John's thoughts and John's history, the things he likes and the things he hates, and Sherlock especially wants to know which category he falls into. All at once, and all the time.

There's an echo of laughter, and it takes Sherlock a minute to realize it's come from him.

*

In Sherlock's hotel room John helps him eat the food he'd ordered earlier. John eats a lot, and Sherlock wonders exactly what sort of life John has been living recently.

John tells him all about it, though, and Sherlock spends most of that time in the unique position of listening to John brag and being impressed despite himself. And then John says something rather pointless.

"No you're not." Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"I think I am," John says, leans forward in the tiny chair he's sitting on, at an angle and halfway facing Sherlock. "And I think I'd know."

"You're really not."

"Am too! Most people assume it within seconds of meeting us."

"People also assume you're an idiot."

John smirks. "You saying I'm not an idiot? I'm touched. Tell me something, though, and I really mean it, I want you to tell me—I definitely _am_ , and just . . . do you think you could ever feel . . . God, I sound like a thirteen year old girl . . . "

Sherlock laughs. "John—"

"No. Just tell me."

"I do feel the same way."

"You—"

"Love."

"Right . . . Er, you sure?"

"Positive," Sherlock shrugs. "It's the only remaining possibility."

Nothing at all changes about John's face. "Sherlock," he says. "I'm going to try something, now. Don't get your knickers in a twist."

"I can assure you I've never done _that_ ," Sherlock says.

John nods to himself, determined, places one hand on Sherlock's shoulder and uses the other to cup his jaw, leans over and presses his lips to Sherlock's just barely, but _insistent_. Sherlock forgets to breathe, feels his chest constrict and his nerve endings light up with sensation, has to gasp for air, which John takes as an invitation to bite at Sherlock's bottom lip before fastening their mouths much, much better together. This huge, lightweight feeling that centers inexplicably on the warm wet conversation of kisses. Sherlock's blood pounds so violently that he can't see, paralyzed by the way his every molecule has awoken and got instantly drunk.

"Sherlock . . . " John says quietly. "Kiss me back." It isn't intoned pleadingly—it's not even a request. The hushed, confident way he forms the words feels like an order.

"I just, oh I dunno . . . " Shakes himself. "I just want . . ."

The hand on Sherlock's shoulder trails up to catch in the hair at the nape of his neck, keep him still as John kisses him again, startling Sherlock into kissing back clumsily. The way John smells, the way his hands move carefully and his eyes show too much makes a feeling like desperation catch in Sherlock's chest.

After a long spell of dizzy heat Sherlock has to pull away for air. He's a bit worried he's about to have a heart attack. But John doesn't wait for him to recover before kissing him again, and Sherlock loses track of time.

When Sherlock finally manages to look at John again it's a barrage of compelling, half formed notions: kiss his mouth, kiss that place where shirt collar meets neck, discover the texture of his hair, _pull_ his hair, kiss his mouth again, feel how warm he is and whether his pulse has accelerated, feel him struggle for breath and kiss back and actually want Sherlock just as much . . .

"I can't think."

John's eyebrows climb. He looked suspiciously smug. "Oh, well, you really needn't . . . "

John leaves the little chair he'd been practically falling out of, leans over Sherlock's chair and looks down at Sherlock like he's something to be devoured.

Some of John's fingertips trace across Sherlock's face, his panting mouth, down his throat before catching in his shirt and yanking him upright. Sherlock tries to pull John closer but John escapes, drags Sherlock to the bed and actually throws him onto it and he . . . oh, this is . . .

"God, can we do this," John says vaguely, grinding down and pulling at Sherlock's clothes. He keeps kissing Sherlock like they're magnetized. "Can we just do this, please? And just not talk about it. And not think about it. And just can we please?"

Sherlock _mm_ 's, reaches for John's shirt.

It's dizzying how quickly their clothes fall away, but Sherlock doesn't have time to catch up once they're gone because then it's so much heat, skin and hard breathing and John's busy mouth sucking at every available patch of Sherlock's skin before honing in on a nipple. Sherlock watches avidly. Is John's hair slightly lighter? It's definitely longer, noticeably so, and Sherlock can card his fingers through it to hold him there.

John laughs, which feels unexpectedly amazing against the sensitive skin. He glances up at Sherlock and keeps licking, holds him down when Sherlock tries to arc up into it and switches to the other nipple instead, sucking and licking at it audibly and he even grazes his teeth across the hardened nub before abandoning it.

John's mouth meanders back up to Sherlock's, kissing him deeply for a moment before disappearing, and Sherlock strains his neck up to follow but is met with John's fingertips at his lips and the lust in John's darkened eyes. "I'm going to fuck you. I assume you have lube?"

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. Being sardonic while his heart is pounding and his cock is harder than it's ever been is a new and undeniably intriguing way to be. "You _assume_?"

"Well?"

Sherlock holds John's gaze for as long as he can. Then he reaches out to the bedside table.

"What the hell . . . it's seriously _right there_?"

"You do pay for convenience in places like these. Apparently that includes—"

"More bang for your buck, indeed."

John sucks Sherlock's cock the whole time he works his fingers into him, goes so slowly that the stretch is barely noticeable, although that could have had something to do with the leisurely way John licks up and down Sherlock's shaft. He never sucks quite hard enough or goes quite deep enough, but he keeps Sherlock gasping and hovering right there on the edge marvelously.

John's got three fingers inside him when he gives Sherlock's cock one last indulgent lick from base to tip and sits back. He offers an innocent little smile, pumping unhurriedly in and out of Sherlock. "How do you want it?"

Sherlock gets caught between a moan and a laugh. "It's . . . I."

John laughs. He is still casually finger fucking him. "I quite like you like this."

"Don't lie, you can't get enough of the sound of my voice."

"Oh no, yeah, you're absolutely right. That's why I'm going to make you moan and shout my name and beg me for more, in a minute here."

Sherlock wants to wipe the smirk off his face. He pushes up onto his elbows and quickly calculates the best way to—

Instead, Sherlock finds himself on his hands and knees, head hanging between his shoulders and eyes shut tight as John's cock slides into him. Once he's fully inside John curses quietly, inhales shakily and kneads Sherlock's arse a bit before grasping his hips and beginning a tentative rhythm that quickly turns punishing.

John breathes rough low half formed words knocked loose by his increasingly frantic thrusts and Sherlock starts to wonder just how long John is going to last, but is gradually becoming completely absorbed by such a thoroughly brightly _good_ sort of pleasure because John's fucking him with unfair precision and Sherlock can smell him and hear him and read the desperate want in his shaking scrabbling hands.

"More," Sherlock groans, trying to push back against him.

John's grip tightens around Sherlock's hips. "Stop squirming."

"More, come _on_."

"Mm, what's the magic word?"

"Now."

John stops moving altogether.

Sherlock heaves a sigh. " _Please_?" he says haughtily.

John rearranges them a bit to stroke Sherlock's cock, but he does it much too lightly and teasingly and he won't let Sherlock thrust into the friction. Biting kisses across Sherlock's shoulders and at the nape of his neck and around the side where he finds a sweet spot that Sherlock is surprised by, John's hot heavy breathing in Sherlock's sweaty hair and his cock pistoning very slowly so very deep inside him but . . .

"Please. John, please . . . "

"Please . . . ?"

"Please just fuck me John _come on_ , just . . . oh, God, please, just _please_ I want you so much, John . . ."

John fucking _growls_ , forces Sherlock's torso down and angles his hips up to pound deeper into him. Sherlock gasps and grapples with the sheets, face smashed against pillows and he keeps shifting up the bed with John's every thrust. He has to brace himself against the headboard, and _oh this exactly this_ , too good too good and then John bites his shoulder and says _Sherlock_ brokenly and comes inside him, one arm vicelike around Sherlock's chest while he bruises Sherlock with his hold on his hip. John gasps _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock,_ and kisses whatever skin he finds until he's spent.

Sherlock expects John to roll off of him, but instead John's fingers wrap around Sherlock's cock again, only stroking lightly until Sherlock can't take it anymore and just covers John's hand with his own to make him go faster. John laughs across Sherlock's shoulder blade and then groans and then pumps his cock faster til Sherlock can't stop writhing around or thinking about how it's John who's doing this to him.

"Yes," John groans. " _God_ yes, oh you look obscenely good . . . "

Sherlock stops helping him, uses his hands instead to tangle the sheets up. John's face buried in his neck while Sherlock buries his in pillows and uses them to muffle whatever he shouts as he comes.

*

Mycroft is starting up with the texts again so they decide to slip away before checking out of the hotel properly. John had laughed and said, _We can't!_ at first, but now here they were.

Alone in the lift and quite unexpectedly, John says, "Do you have any idea what you've done for me?" John watches the numbers counting down. The sight of his profile makes Sherlock breathless in a way that terrifies him. "I've never looked forward to life like I do now," John continues, careless. "It's always been a duty or an obligation or because of what somebody else wanted from me."

Sherlock snorts. "It wasn't my intention to 'save you', or whatever it is you're getting at. I merely enjoy having you around."

"That's exactly it, though. There wasn't an agenda, and that's got to mean something with you. You just like having me around. That's it. Nobody has ever found me interesting enough to just want to have around."

Sherlock isn't surprised about that, though. Most people were incredibly unobservant, or willfully blind. "You're not _that_ interesting. You're just not as tediously predictable as most people. In some respects, anyway."

John laughs. "You now, people think you don't understand normal behavior, but really they just hate how completely you do understand it, and are afraid of your scrutiny turning on them."

"And you're not?"

"Well, I know it's no use telling you to shut up. And I hear it's better to know yourself than to deny and repress and oh hang on, isn't that your mode of operation?"

Sherlock's mouth twitches. "Shut up."

The lift opens up and they walk through the lobby. "Listen, Sherlock. I get why you faked your death, I do, but if you _ever_ pull a stunt like that again . . . "

"You'll follow through with punching me?"

". . . I'll still love you anyway. You're right though, I'd absolutely punch you, too." He pauses. "I'm . . . not sure which part of that is more fucked up. It is fucked up, though, isn't it?"

"Yes."

John thinks it over, shrugs, and leads him out onto the street.

*


End file.
